The Political Economy of Slavery by Eugene D. Genovese

“What slavery could not do, despite its economies of scale and its financial advantages, was to lay the foundation for sustained growth and qualitative development. Nowhere did it advance science and technology, generate self-expanding home markets adequate to encourage industrial diversification, accumulate capital within its own sphere for industrial development, or encourage the kind of entrepreneurship without which modern industry would have been unthinkable. It produced spectacular growth in response to the demand of an outside society but simultaneously guaranteed stagnation and decline once that support was withdrawn.”

-Eugene D. Genovese, 1961